Bad Wolf Howling
by Grac3
Summary: Part four of the Angel!Verse. Rose absorbs the Time Vortex to save the Doctor; the Doctor absorbs the Time Vortex to save Rose - but, in the end, he saves both of them instead. Twoshot. Episode tag: Parting of the Ways (re-write).
1. The Doctor

**Warnings:** Religious references, slight spoilers for The Day of the Doctor, Doctor self-bashing/self-hating

**Series summary: **The TARDIS doesn't always take the Doctor where he wants to go, but it always takes him where he needs to go; Time Lords hold a secret behind their backs, and they have a duty to follow.

**Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who (or the lines from Parting of the Ways)**

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Chapter 1 – The Doctor

The Doctor placed his hands on the switch, ready to pull it and destroy all of the Daleks – and Earth in the process. The Dalek Emperor claimed to be immortal, but he wasn't; the Doctor knew that only God was truly immortal, and everything's time came – including his.

But he couldn't do it. The Doctor was reminded of that awful day, the Last Day, when he had activated the Moment and destroyed it all – even though it appeared that he had failed, and that the Daleks were alive and well while all the Time Lords but him had perished. Not only was there no guarantee that the Daleks would be annihilated by this new effort, but there was no way that he could commit genocide again. Maybe if he hadn't met Rose, he would have been able to do it, but the thought of her looking at him, disappointed, crumbled his resolve.

He let go of the switch. "Coward. Any day."

"Mankind will be harvested because of your weakness," the Dalek Emperor reminded him, though the Doctor was finding it more and more difficult to see how not committing mass murder was a weakness.

"And what about me?" he asked, though he felt that he knew what the answer would be.

"You will be exterminated."

The Doctor felt strangely hollow at that prospect. He had no idea if he would regenerate if he was shot by a Dalek, though on some level he almost wished that he wouldn't. Rose was gone, living her life back on Earth, safe from all of the dangers that he could bring her; Jack was lying dead somewhere else on the platform…

"Maybe it's time," he lamented, closing his eyes.

The time stretched on, tense and anticipatory; he heard the sound of the TARDIS, the wonderful, familiar sound ready to send him away to where the other Time Lords were awaiting his arrival…

"Alert! TARDIS materialising!" The panic was evident in the voice of the Dalek, and the Doctor realised that the sound was not imaginary – somehow, Rose had overcome Emergency Programme One and rebooted the TARDIS to come back to him: the stupid ape. "You will not escape!"

The Doctor turned to the TARDIS to see its doors open, and he was blinded by the light that poured from within. He lifted his hands to shield his eyes, shying away from the immense power. When he could bear it, he lowered his hands, staring in wonder at Rose as she stood in the doorway, long tendrils of bright yellow light reaching beyond the confines of the miniscule outside of the blue box. He fell backwards, and Rose disappeared, reappearing a few feet in front of him.

"What have you done?" he asked, terrified at what his pink and yellow girl was doing to herself.

"I looked into the TARDIS, and the TARDIS looked into me."

The Doctor couldn't believe what he was hearing. Golden light was swirling within Rose's eyes, giving them a terrible beauty. She didn't understand what she had done, for the TARDIS alone couldn't do this to someone. "You looked into the Time Vortex. Rose, no one's meant to see that!"

"This is the Abomination!" the Dalek Emperor cried, and as much as the Doctor wanted to tear the creature limb from limb for referring to Rose as that, he couldn't help but agree with him.

"Exterminate!" A Dalek shot at Rose, but she caught the beam in her hand and sent it back.

"I am the Bad Wolf," Rose declared, staring up at the words that had plagued the two of them throughout time and space. "I create myself." She lifted her hand, drawing her palm across the words. "I scatter them in time and space: a message to lead myself here."

The Doctor could barely take this any longer. "Rose! You've got to stop this – you've got to stop this _now_. You've got the entire Vortex running through your head. You're gonna burn!"

Ignoring the Doctor's panic, Rose turned to him, the golden light in her eyes disappearing. "I want you safe," she said simply, and the Doctor's hearts threatened to tear themselves apart. She was putting herself in grave danger, exactly how she had done all those weeks before when she had risked absolute perception overload from fixing his injured wing. When was she going to learn that she couldn't keep risking herself for his sake; he wasn't worth it. "My Doctor. Protected from the false god."

"You cannot hurt me," the Dalek Emperor told her. "I am immortal."

"You are tiny," Rose told the Dalek Emperor, her voice changing; the London twang was gone, replaced with some upper class quality that sounded wrong coming from Rose's mouth. "I can see the whole of time and space. Every single atom of your existence and I divide them." The gold returned to her eyes as she lifted her hand and a Dalek disintegrated. "Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies."

The Doctor watched in both fear and amazement as Rose raised her arms and the Daleks surrounding them disintegrated as the first had. "The Time War ends."

"I will not die. I cannot die!"

But he did. The Bad Wolf destroyed the entire Dalek fleet, including the Emperor, and Rose was left with the Time Vortex running through her head on Platform One. She had done it, she had saved the Doctor – and now he needed to save her.

"Rose, you've done it – now stop. Just stop."

"How can I let go of this?" she asked, the accent he was familiar with returning to her now pained voice. "I bring life."

The Doctor sensed a resurrection – Jack's resurrection, as the ex-Time Agent became a Fact, a wrong thing, just like the thing that was standing before him. "No, this is wrong! You can't control life and death!"

"But I can," Rose said simply, looking back down at him. "The sun, and the moon. The day and night. But why do they hurt?" Tears were running down her cheeks, but the Doctor was sure that it couldn't possibly be hurting Rose as much as it was hurting him.

"The power's gonna kill you, and it's my fault!" he admonished himself, looking away from Rose Tyler, from the latest casualty of his life and actions.

"I can see everything," she told him, and that caught his attention. "All that is, all that was, all that could be."

A jolt of excitement shot through the Doctor. Finally there was someone else who could understand his mind, for the first time since Gallifrey had burned. He stood up. "That's what I see, all the time." But he couldn't be selfish; he couldn't ask Rose to stay this way just so that he could pretend that she was a Time Lord. Even as the Bad Wolf, Rose did not have wings, and she never would. "And doesn't it drive you mad?"

"My head-" she whimpered.

"Come here."

"-is killing me."

"I think you need a Doctor," he smirked, pulling her towards him and turning to the side.

He knew just how to save his pink and yellow girl.

He leaned down to her level, pressing his lips to hers. It seemed cruel that their first kiss was in circumstances such as these, but he ignored the pity he felt for himself in favour of joy when he realised that she was kissing him back.

The Time Vortex leaked out of her, crossing over to him as he wrapped his wings around the two of them; once he had absorbed it all, he would start to die, and then he would regenerate…

But he didn't want to. He wasn't ready to leave this body behind, to risk Rose leaving him once he became someone else – for he had known, ever since he had first told her about regeneration all that time ago, over fish and chips after Earth burned, that she was absolutely terrified of him regenerating on her, and to be honest, he didn't blame her.

So he didn't take it all. He pulled back from the kiss as both of their eyes were still burning gold.

"Let go," he murmured, and in her weakening state, she didn't have the strength to hold onto the Bad Wolf anymore. They breathed out in sync, the golden light leaving them and going back into the TARDIS.

Rose collapsed when it was done, but the Doctor caught her, stumbling slightly as the effects of the Time Vortex weakened him. Knowing that he would have to leave Jack behind, he carried Rose into the TARDIS bridal-style, placing her gently on the grating.

His head was throbbing and his vision blurring as he settled the TARDIS into the Time Vortex. Once they were safely away from Platform One, he could fight the weakness off no longer – he stumbled around the console to where Rose was lying, dropping to his knees by her side and then crumpling into a horizontal position next to her.

The last thing he saw before his vision went black was Rose's peaceful, sleeping face, still marred with the tears that the Bad Wolf had made her cry.


	2. Rose

**Warnings:** Slight religious references

**Disclaimer: Don't own Doctor Who (or the lines from Parting of the Ways)**

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Chapter 2 – Rose

Rose had laid on the grating that made up the floor of the control room enough times in the past to know where she was when she awoke – after all, there wasn't really any other way to have a conversation with the Doctor when he was fixing something underneath the console. Yet while she understood exactly where she was, she had no idea how she had got there – or where the Doctor was himself.

Then again, she mused, she wasn't going to find out anything for certain until she opened her eyes, so that was exactly what she did next.

Once she was no longer looking at the insides of her eyelids, she saw that she was, indeed, lying on the floor of the TARDIS control room, staring up at the ceiling. Somewhere in the background, she could hear the sounds of whirring and humming, the familiar pattern of noises that she associated with the ship being in flight. The Doctor had to be there somewhere – she just didn't know where.

"Alright?"

Rose almost jumped as the cheery Northern voice reached her ears; she turned her head to the side to see the Doctor standing on the other side of the console, his image slightly distorted and blurred through the glass cylinder reaching up to the ceiling: the blue tubes inside of the cylinder were moving up and down – they were obviously still travelling.

"What happened?" she asked; she tried casting her mind back to try and remember just how she had ended up unconscious on the floor of the control room – and why the Doctor hadn't moved her, as he usually did when she fell asleep somewhere in the TARDIS that wasn't her bedroom – but she kept drawing blanks.

"Don't you remember?" the Doctor asked, rather unnecessarily.

She searched her memory with a little more scrutiny, trying to find something that would give her a clue as to what had happened since the Doctor had bundled her and the TARDIS off to her home when he had been in grave danger, yet she found that it was tremendously difficult; it was as though someone had put some kind of mental block in her head that prevented her from accessing her memories from the time that had passed since then – however much time that had been.

Yet after a while, she began to recall something… a song…

"There was singing," she told the Doctor, and through the glass she saw him look up from the console and grin at her.

"That's right," he smiled, nodding slightly. "I sang a song and the Daleks ran away."

Rose had to stop herself from snorting slightly at that; she had never once heard the Doctor sing, and she was sure that she never would – besides, the song that she remembered had sounded far more alien than either the Doctor or the Daleks could ever be to her humanity: it had sounded not merely other-worldly, but ethereal, and she found that pondering on the song itself sent shivers down her spine.

Nevertheless, there were still two things wrong with the Doctor's testimony: for one thing, Rose didn't think that the Daleks would run away from anything for any reason, much less because the Doctor had 'sang a song'; secondly, the Doctor singing a song and the Daleks running away did not explain how she had got back to the Doctor again in the first place. After all, the TARDIS had been shut down, destined to stand on a street corner and gather dust – yet now, it was not only back in the hands of the Doctor, but it was also flying again.

Rose thought back even further, to try and work out what had happened to the TARDIS after it had taken her home.

"I was at home," she began, deciding to start with the first thing that she remembered; but then she remembered a truck being driven by her mother, and a panel being ripped open – a panel in the TARDIS. "No I wasn't, I was in the… TARDIS." She sighed, trying to remember what had happened when she had got the panel on the console open. "There was this light…"

"Don't strain yourself," the Doctor warned her, not moving from his position on the other side of the console. "I'm sure it'll come back to you."

"Why can't you just tell me?" she huffed, lifting her hand in a meaningless gesture before dropping it back down onto the grating with a metallic _thunk_. "And why won't you come out from there?" She tried to sit up a little further, but she was assaulted by a wave of nausea that prevented her from rising any more.

She blinked away the effects of the head rush, clearing her mind to relieve herself of the sudden, sharp pain…

And then it all came back to her.

She had looked into the TARDIS. She had become the Bad Wolf. She had absorbed the power of the Time Vortex and destroyed the Dalek fleet, ending the Time War.

Overwhelmed at having done something so violent – though it had seemed rather beautiful at the time – she sat up, her knees bent before her, and lifted her hands to her face.

"Doctor, what have I done?" she despaired, though he still didn't step out from behind the console.

"You got rid of the Daleks and saved the Earth," the Doctor explained to her. "Saved me in the process, as well. Thank you."

"But… the Time Vortex. Where did it go?" she asked, panicking.

"I took care of that." The Doctor stepped out from the console at last, standing before Rose with his arms outstretched, as though something about his appearance could explain to her why she was safe now.

She could see nothing different about him, though: he had the same jumper, the same close-cut hair, the same leather jacket, the same wings…

The same wings.

"I can see your wings," she breathed, astonished, lowering her hands from her face. The Doctor smiled warmly down at her. "_How_?"

"The Bad Wolf gave you the power to see them, and made you strong enough to avoid any future instances of perception overload," the Doctor explained, taking a step closer. "You'll never not be able to see them again."

"But the power? You said it would burn me."

"Not anymore, I got rid of it. Split it between us and sent it back to the TARDIS. Neither of us are in any danger."

Rose's head was spinning, still trying to get to grips with the fact that she would now always be able to see his wings, thanks to the Bad Wolf following her throughout time and space. She took a few deep breaths to try and calm herself. It had been a very surreal day, and the outcome of all of these events would take some getting used to.

She was only vaguely aware of the Doctor kneeling down next to her as she thought about all that had happened since she had woken up that morning, until she stumbled upon one rather specific detail hidden away in the midst of her jumbled memories. She turned to the Doctor, and his brow furrowed in confusion.

"You kissed me," she said simply, and she noticed that a faint blush rose up his cheeks.

"Well," he shrugged, looking away slightly, "it was the only way to save your life. Bloody good way, and all-"

The Doctor began rambling about energy transference and the power of the Time Vortex, but Rose wasn't really listening; she was caught up in that memory and, as much as she loved to listen to his soft Northern burr, she didn't want to be hearing it right now.

"Doctor," she interrupted him.

"What?" he asked, pausing briefly in his ramblings.

"Shut up," she ordered him, and, grabbing him by the lapels and bringing him down to her level, she gave him a kiss that – this time – neither of them would forget.

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**A.N.:** So, Nine survives! The next few stories will be re-writes, much like this one, because I need to outline some of the changes that happen in canon during Ten's era, and especially now that it won't be Ten experiencing them. The next one will be Doomsday (the end of it), but I'm not going to spend a lot of time focusing on Ten's era, to be honest. I might go back to it once I've written all of the stories that I have ideas for now, because I'd love to write more about Nine and Rose during Series 2, but this time round I'm going to be skipping through it pretty quickly so I can get to Eleven's era.

**A.N.2:** The next story has been written, and it will be published in a couple of days, but after that there will probably be a wait.

**UPDATE 30/06/14:** Next part of the Angel!Verse, Defender of the Earth, is up now.


End file.
